Munster are clinging on to second place in Pool 3 of the Champions Cup by the slenderest of margins ahead of Saracens, namely a points difference of +29 as against +28, with both teams on 10 match points. Clinging on somehow seems apt, much like their status as one of European rugby’s grandees.
Realistically, therefore, Munster probably have to beat Northampton in Franklin’s Gardens on Saturday afternoon (kick-off 3.15pm) to ensure they finish above the Saints and thus ensure themselves of a home tie in the Round of 16 for the first time in three seasons. Otherwise the expectation must be that Saracens will better Munster’s result when they host Castres 24 hours later.
Failure to progress beyond the Round of 16 would mean Munster going three successive campaigns without reaching the quarter-finals for the first time since the inaugural three seasons of the competition from 1995-96 to 1997-98, ie, back when the Irish provinces didn’t really count.
Even as things stand Munster have only reached one quarter-final in the last five seasons, when losing to Toulouse in a goal-kicking competition after an epic stalemate over 100 minutes. Although it tells us much about the Munster’s hierarchy’s priorities that this match had to be played in the Aviva Stadium as, despite the quarter-final weekend being known in advance, they had leased out Thomond Park for Ed Sheeran concerts.
There has been one Round of 16 tie behind closed doors and a first leg of a two-legged last 16 tie, but the last time Munster hosted a quarter-final at Thomond Park was in 2018, when Andrew Conway’s try manufactured a trademark Houdini-esque act of escapism against Toulon.
For sure Munster have had some wonderful players in that time, and they are a well-coached squad. They couldn’t have won the URC title two seasons ago, or finished top of the regular 18-game campaign last season, without still being a good side.
But a third successive season without a third Champions Cup tie at Thomond Park, and that invaluable source of revenue, would be revisiting those mid-90s years. And a seventh successive season without a quarter-final at Thomond Park would be a famine.
Compare and contrast with the ensuing 20 seasons from 1998-99 to 2017-18, when Munster reached 17 quarter-finals, of which nine were in Limerick, and one in Lansdowne Road while Thomond Park was being redeveloped.
The late, great Garrett Fitzgerald was CEO of Munster for those two decades, and maintained Munster’s achievements were a miracle given Leinster’s socio-economic advantages.
Even so they seem to have become a comparatively mismanaged machine since those halcyon days, and they are producing increasingly less players for international rugby.
True, the class of the Noughties was a golden generation. But this week’s two Irish squad announcements for the Six Nations and the Under-20 Six Nations are instructive. Simon Easterby’s 36-man squad contains only five Munster players, the same as Connacht, one more than Ulster, and 18 less than Leinster.
Munster fans can argue all they want about individual cases such as Tom Ahern, Gavin Coombes and Alex Kendellen, while Oli Jager and Craig Casey are injured, and under David Nucifora the IRFU’s focus became too based on Leinster to the detriment of the other three provinces. But, however much you dress it up, Munster have inexorably become less productive.
The Munster quintet contain two world-class players, Peter O’Mahony and Conor Murray – 34 and 35 respectively. Each still makes Munster a better team, but Murray this week admitted he is not even considering his future beyond this season, and this campaign may be a last dance for the pair of them in the wake of Keith Earls, Simon Zebo and others.
Of the others Tadhg Beirne is a product of the Leinster system – although where Munster would have been without him for the last seven seasons doesn’t bear thinking about. Which leaves Jack Crowley, an outhalf from Bandon, and Calvin Nash, a winger from Limerick.
While there is talent coming through in the considerable ability of Brian Gleeson, Ruadhán Quinn and others, there’s no sign of Munster suddenly yielding a richer harvest.
Nathan Doak’s 31-man under-20s squad has a similar and familiar breakdown, with 17 Leinster players, five apiece from Munster and Ulster, three from Connacht, and one from England.
Of the Munster quintet the promising ex-CBC and Constitution prop Michael Foy, now with UCC, has had his progress delayed by injury. The lock Conor Kennelly is also a product of CBC and Con, and now with Highfield. Ironically, the under-20s captain and backrower Eanna McCarthy is also a product of CBC, but seemingly didn’t fit in the Munster academy, and having been chased by the other three, pitched up in Connacht and Galwegians.
The 19-year-old Munster academy centre Gene O’Leary Kareem is a product of Highfield and PBC, whom he captained to the Munster Schools Senior Cup final win over CBC last season. Another is centre Eoghan Smyth, a 19-year-old product of Midleton College who doubtless owes his inclusion through his eye-catching performances as an ever-present in the All-Ireland League this season with Cork Constitution. And there should be a lesson in this.
The stylish Munster academy outhalf Dylan Hicks, who has also been playing regularly in Division 1A of the AIL with Garryowen, is a product of Bantry.
Admittedly, the Shannon prop Emmet Calvey and the flanker Luke Murphy, who hails from Cratloe in Clare and came through Shannon and Ardscoil Rís, were stars of last year’s under-20s team and are still eligible but currently injured.
Yet there are no forwards from Limerick or its surrounding feeder area in either the Irish senior or under-20s squad, something that would have been unthinkable even 15 years ago.
Back in Ireland’s 2009 Grand Slam campaign of the 40 players who were part of the Irish squad, 15 came from Munster, 12 from Leinster, eight from Ulster and five from across the water, with none from Connacht.
Nine years later of the 36 players named in the original squad and four subsequent call-ups in that Grand Slam campaign, Leinster had become bulk suppliers with 19, but Munster still provided 12, with five from Ulster and four from Connacht.
Talking to several well-placed people inside Munster rugby the primary problem appears to be the ongoing attempt to ape the Leinster system without having anything like similar resources and competitive standards.
Thanks to the superior facilities and wages paid to coaches in Blackrock College, St Michael’s, Gonzaga et al, Leinster have a conveyor belt of ready-made talent for their academy system. Such are their numbers Leinster can afford some players slipping through the system.
Some schools in Munster do put a focus on nurturing young rugby talent. For example, Johnny Holland the oversees the CBC programme and Duncan Williams is their head coach. But others depend on a perfect storm, ie Seán Skehan coaching a Glenstal team with Ben Healy, or can flit between focusing on rugby or hurling/Gaelic football.
Individually the Munster clubs and schools cannot hope to emulate Leinster. Akin to Connacht, they should start working together rather than separately, and stop preventing players from continuing their playing ties with the clubs who introduced them to the game.
In those vital development years of, say, 12 to 15, talented young players need specialist coaching and improved competition structures rather than being coached by voluntary teachers or PE teachers. Munster need to find a Munster way, and delve into their famed club game, where most are struggling to field second teams, or in some cases even under-20s teams.
Limerick clubs won 13 of the first 19 AILs. They’ve not had one winner since Shannon in 2009. By all accounts the soap opera that is Munster is riven with divides among the clubs themselves, or the clubs and the schools.
The decline in production lines from Limerick comes at a time when the squad, senior and academy, has been based exclusively in their High Performance Centre in the University of Limerick, and when Thomond Park has become Munster’s primary home more than ever.
And this, of course, leads to the elephant in the room, namely the Limerick/Cork divide, and specifically the profound disenchantment and thorough disengagement within Cork.
Granted, Thomond Park was being redeveloped in that 2008-09 season when Cork hosted nine Magners League matches, including the Leinster game. But the following season Cork hosted three Magners League games, against the Dragons, Edinburgh and Scarlets. Two seasons ago it was Zebre, Lions and Scarlets; last season the Dragons, Glasgow and Zebre, and this season the Ospreys’ visit for Munster’s rain-drenched 23-0 win in October will be followed by Edinburgh in February and Benetton in May.
So disaffected have the Cork rugby fraternity become that many have ceased travelling to Thomond Park for games. Donal Lenihan has been banging this drum for years, and calling aloud for the festive Leinster game to be moved to Páirc Uí Chaoimh, where the games against the Crusaders and South Africa in the last two seasons drew 40,000-plus capacity crowds.
This would be a significant gesture of goodwill toward Munster’s Cork following, yet apparently the excuse for not doing so was that hotel rooms were already booked for Leinster. Well, then, plan in advance.
Leinster don’t have to be paid to pitch up in Cork or Limerick, whereas the Crusaders were reputedly paid €250,000 and the Springboks €280,000.
Munster’s current CEO Ian Flanagan recently told the Irish Examiner that “the financials aren’t compelling” enough to switch an existing league fixture from Thomond Park to the home of Cork GAA. No doubt that went down like a lead balloon in Cork.
If Leinster can move a derby to Croke Park and Connacht move one to MacHale Park then Munster can do likewise. Munster need to start thinking outside the box. The province needs a rethink and a revamp to find solutions within.
They could do worse than find some overseeing role for Declan Kidney, who gets the Munster zeitgeist and the Cork-Limerick divide. In his last six seasons as head coach he took the province to their four Heineken Cup finals, and he is in Cork after his four years as director of rugby at London Irish.
On this day all of this might seem ill-timed and negative. The fervent hope remains that Munster secure a home Round of 16 tie, that somehow they even earn an overdue Thomond Park quarter-final.
No less than Ulster and Connacht, as Matt Williams argues elsewhere in this section, Irish rugby needs Munster remaining competitive at the elite end of European rugby. It needs a stronger Munster than its current version. The consequences of a continuing decline in how the province is run and managed would be disastrous.
And not just for Munster.
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